Two things occur to me here.
While the Executioner books are, without question, both tough
and colloquial, and consequently fair game on this list, Mack
Bolan's literary forebears are not really the Spades,
Marlowes, Gars, etc., and other denizens of the hardboiled
pulp magazines, but a different type of pulp detective
altogether.
Specifically, the avenging "Super-Detective" best exemplified
by The Shadow, in whose wake followed characters like The
Spider, The Phantom Detective, The Moon Man, and The Patent
Leather Kid.
Like The Executioner, these characters operated outside the
law, inhabiting a dark urban world in which violence was
rampant. They made it their business to personal visit
justice of a decidedly lethal and illegal type on the
criminals they encountered. Pendleton's main contribution was
to add a lot of well-researched military technology.
Second, while the Executioner is the father of the
"Men's Action" genre, a transitional figure who could be
called the "grandfather" is Nick Carter. Nick's been
evertyhting from a Victorian Holmes wanna-be, to a
Depression-era hardboiled PI, but in his most recent
incarnation, he was a deliberately imitative James Bond clone
who starred in nearly 200 espionage novels.
Some of the writers who've contributed to Nick's saga
include Michael Avallone (who actually wrote the first
"Nick Carter - Killmaster" novel RUN SPY RUN, and so, in a
sense, may be termed Nick's creator, or at least re-booter),
PWA founder Bob Randisi, Edgar-winner Michael Collins,
techno-thriller ace David Hagberg, and our own Bill Crider
whose first published book was a collaborative Nick
novel.
JIM DOHERTY
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